Stalin The Voice of

the Party Breaks

Trotsky
Before the death of the father of the Revolutionnow its
patron sainttwo figures stood at the focus of the worlds
attention: Lenin and Trotsky. Since then the figure of
Stalin has grown to commanding proportions. Now it is
Stalin and Trotsky who dominate the Russian scene. And,
as the years go by, they have come to dominate in vividly
contrasting ways.

Stalin is undisputed boss to-day. He rules through his

commanding position as General Secretary of the
dominant party, and from that post influences the
appointment chairmen of the Council of Peoples
Commissars and the heads of politics and industry. He
sees practically no foreigners and none of the high non-
Communist administrative officers of Government: his
work is to keep the party machine organised and efficiently
functioning. But that is ultimately the most powerful post
in the nation.

Trotskys Popularityso Richly Deserved.

Trotsky, on the other hand, is admittedly broken

politically. After his first defeat three years ago he was still
more popular than the whole Central Committee to which
he bowed; after his second defeat, a year and a half ago, he
was still more popular with the rank and file; more
important than any other single individual. But after his
last defeat he can hardly claim even wide popularity. His
supporters are baffled and scattered. Small groups of
Communists from distant village districts even send in
resolutions that folk who persist in keeping up discussion
should be thrown out of the party.

And yet, though he is beaten, deprived of most of his

jobs, with his assignment to future work hanging obviously
on the week by week decision of the Central Committee,
which Stalin controls, it is still Trotskys slogans that are
followed. His theses on industry, presented three years
ago, still furnish the mottoes of this year;
Industrialization and Regime of Economy. His
consolidation of the electrical industries, effected by a two
weeks conference more than a year ago, still determines
the programme of that most popular industry in Russia.
Every fight that he initiates has its effect on policya year
late. Every practical suggestion he made last spring is now
a part of the orthodox programme. Every vital suggestion
he makes gets adopted sooner or later, and often without
alterations. Onlyhe himself is never allowed to do the job
of carrying them into action. He is attacked for his manner
of making criticisms, even when his criticisms are
followed.

The Opposition grouped around Trotsky is small, but

very able. It contains practically all the names known
abroad as makers of the October Revolution: Zinovieff,
Kameneff, Radek, Sokolnikoff, Piatakoff, and many others.
These were the men who were abroad in Europe during the
Tzarist days of persecution: they learned Western
languages, Western industrial technique, Western
revolutionary movements. They became internationalists
not only in theory, but also in instinct. They comprise all
the good orators of the Communist Party. Meetings have
become dull since the Opposition was suppressed. Their
weakness was a lack of touch with the peasant and the
hinterland of Russia.

Stalins Backing.

The majority group, around Stalin, consists mainly of

those old Bolsheviki who spent their days of exile in the
backwoods of Russia and Siberia, knowing no Western
languages, but learning to know the peasant and the
backward nationalities. They built up the illegal factory
organizations and are bound by a thousand ties of dangers,
shared with all the far-flung web of the old Bolshevist
machine of Russia. In every factory their men are now
heroes of pre-revolutionary days, revered leaders of the
younger generation of workers growing up around them.
Their unity is welded by years of facing death together, and
their control of the party machine is apparently
unbreakable. They, also, are internationalist by theory, but
a certain percentage of their following is nationalist by
instinct.

Between these two groups lies a theoretical gulf which to

the practically minded outsider seems remote and
unimportant. But to the Communist, for whom ultimate
theory and immediate practice rarely get clearly
differentiated, this chasm is so wide that the two groups
can hardly speak across it with understanding.

From the standpoint of capitalist nations, the area of

agreement between the two groups is far greater than is
that of disagreement. Both are sincerely convinced that
Russia is to-day engaged in the job of building
Socialismand with a considerable degree of success.
Both expect, as a matter of faith, an inevitable world-
revolution. This point of view differs so radically from that
of other Governments as completely, to overshadow the
internal Communist dissension.

Must Socialism be International?

When carefully examined the point of conflict between

the Stalin and Trotsky groups turns on the theoretical
question of whether Socialism can be built completely in
one land, and that a backward one like Russia, without any
help from revolution in other countries. The older view,
still held by Trotsky, maintains that more than Russia
must be won for the revolution it Socialism is to be a
complete success. The newer view, now held by the vast
majority of Russian Communists, is that they can do the
whole job aloneif they have no foreign war in the
meantime.

But this apparently minor difference leads to important

practical differences in immediate Soviet policy, such as
the industrial programme, the peasant problem, and many
other matters. If Russia alone is to be the base of the
Socialist structure then the peasant must be made an ally
of the Government at once; if foreign workers are to help
some day then it wiser to hold off the peasant as long as
possible and industrialise the country in the meantime.

Personal Cleavage.

Entirely apart from this tactical disagreement, however,

the cleavage in function between Stalin and Trotsky, which
keeps Trotsky continuously out of any effective action in
connection even with programmes he has invented, has
also a basis in the nature of the two individuals.

Trotsky is a personality: he inspires millions. Stalin is

only a perfect Secretary. Yet Stalin wins and Trotsky loses.
Trotsky loses because his personality is always in evidence;
Stalin wins because he succeeds in making, himself
forgotten. He is thought of not as a man but as the Voice
of the Party.

Personal allegiances are at a discount among the

Communists. Aside from their reverence for Lenin, who is
no longer a man but a symbol, they wish to follow, not any
individual, but the collective will of the organization. Stalin
succeeds by becoming identified with that collective will. A
man who can do that is, of course, a great politician.

Stalin the Man.

Because of this it is very hard to obtain any clear

impression of Stalin as an individual. No one knows him
except the older Communists. He appears seldom at
meetings or in the press. A friend of mine who blundered
into his rooms in the Kremlin one day received chiefly an
impression of an austerity, sun-lit, clean, workmanlike,
with flowers in the window. Like all the older.
Communists, Stalin works night and day and is not in good
health. Most of those men who made the revolution be
gone by its tenth anniversary predicted the Kremlin
doctor; and the series of funeralsLenin, Vorovsky,
Dserjinsky, Krassingives point to his statement. All have
suffered imprisonment, exile, hunger, battle since the days
of youth. And all still work unceasinglymorning,
afternoon, evening, till after midnight.

Stalin is no exception. He won his very nameStalin,

the Steel Onefor his work in the Georgian section of the
Bolsheviki, the most daringly adventurous group in old
Russia. Theirs were the guerrilla tactics of trained
mountaineers. They made a sport of robbing the special
emissaries of the Tzar who were bearing funds to the
Persian Embassy or Georgian dependency, and they
turned the funds over, untouched by any individual, to the
communised party treasury for propaganda. On one such
occasion, when the seizure of funds led to armed conflict, a
venturesome member of the band snatched a cloak and hat
from his opponents. Caparisoned as a Czars official, he
dashed into the mle and rescued the treasure while his
comrades scattered to a later meeting-place to receive it.
Other members of this group suffered years of torture
without betraying secrets.

Stalins Real Name.

Such was the daring of the flaming youth who bestowed

the name Stalin, the Steel One, on the man who to-day is
famed for being the perfect secretary, and who in those
days, among many aliases, had the real name Joseph
Vessaryanovich Dzhugovili. Son of a peasant cobbler, he
was sent on a Czars scholarship to a theological school, the
only task, it is said, that Stalin ever began and did not
finish. He was expelled for revolutionary leanings, began
organising Baku oil workers, and was soon sent to Siberia
on the first of many periods of exile.

It was by lonely mail-courier across the Siberian snows

that Stalin first heard of Lenin. He wrote to a trusted
friend to ask if this new prophet, Lenin, was really what he
seemed, the mountain eagle of our party. And it was
across the Siberian snows, without attending a congress,
that Stalin followed Lenin into the ranks of Bolsheviki at
the time of the party split. From that time on he was a
devoted disciple, though he saw Lenin very seldom; for
while Lenin was in exile abroad, writing forbidden
literature and smuggling it into Russia, Stalin was
organising illegal Bolsheviki groups in factories and
escaping from frequent prisons and distant Arctic
internments. He was unknown outside the party ranks, but
was gradually rising within the organization.

Stalins Mistake: That He Never Makes Mistakes.

It is characteristic of Stalin that he has never made a

recognised mistake, as mistakes are interpreted to-day in
Russia. Always he sided with Lenin: and if Lenin himself
very often admitted mistakes, these cannot be remembered
against any disciple. When Zinovieff deserted, Stalin stood
with Lenin and Trotsky when Trotsky erred, Stalin was still
with Lenin. The only accusation possible against such a
man is the charge of being a rubber stamp; and this charge
has been made in the heat of opposition. On one occasion
when Stalin was enumerating the mistakes of
Preobrazkensky, the latter cried; At least I worked with
my own mind. Stalin merely nodded, adding: And
worked with it badly. Thus he refused to be drawn into a
personal defence, maintaining himself as the judging voice
of the party.

The Voice of the Party.

 How successful he has been in thus maintaining himself
is indicated by many incidents. Two years ago a
Communist friend said to me: When Zinovieff says a thing
we wait to hear from the Central Committee: when Stalin
says a thing we know it is settled. Another friend
remarked in connection with Trotskys second defeat: Any
one who threatens party unity will be thus dealt with.
Zinovieff would be even worse treated, for he is less
popular.

And Stalin? I asked. If he threatened party unity? My

friend looked nonplussed. Finally he replied: But Stalin
could not threaten party unity. Stalin could not be
thought of in this mans mind aside from the unified voice
of the party.

In public appearances Stalin is not a remarkable

speaker. His voice is low, his style of delivery poor; he is
even hard to understand in a big meeting. But in more
intimate party conferences he is effective. One his personal
friends says that the beginning of his speech is not
interesting, But as step by step he piles up argument, his
words become convincing, then importantand therefore
interesting. He is tiresome, but very wise. He attains
emphasis, not by raising his voice, but by lowering if, until
men strain to hear.

Trotskys Effect.

Utterly different is Trotskys effect on a meeting. In the

old days, when he entered any auditorium, tumultuous,
continued applause interrupted whoever was speaking.
Cheers and inspiring emotion punctuated his addresses,
and he never spoke without leaving some phrases that
passed into the nations vocabulary as slogans. He had a
journalists training and he thinks naturally in headlines.
Headlines and slogans may stir a nation to battle and save
a revolution; but they are always a trifle inaccurate and
unsafe as a logical statement of party programme. They are
always an over simplification of a problem.
 There are two men whom responsible party workers
really go to hear, a Russian Communist said to me before
the last party discussion. Trotsky for the thrill of getting a
new idea and the joy of its brilliant presentation; Stalin for
the cold but accurate formulation of ones next task and
duty.

Only indirectly may one obtain a glimpse of Stalins

personal ideals for himself as organiser of men. It is given
in his appreciation of Sverdlov whom he calls aside from
Lenin, the only great organiser our party has yet
produced. It is clear that Stalin does not consider Trotsky
a great organiser, although Trotskys genius created the
Red Army. Stalin outlines calmly and completely what it
means to be an organiser under our conditions. Here we
can see his own ideala stern and colourless one, but
terrific in its singleness of purpose:

To be an organiser means first to

know ones men, their strong and weak
qualities; to know them
dispassionately, what each is good for.

It means, next, to place ones men so

that their strong points have full
exercise and their weak points are
corrected or neutralised or, even made
into elements of strength; so that each
man feels that he has the chance to
express the utmost he has in him to
give to the revolution.

It means, third, to relate ones men to

each other in such fashion that the
joint result of their work shall produce,
not uneven disjointedness, but a steady
crescendo of the work as a whole; and
so that, lastly, this work shall be clearly
and increasingly directed toward the
 aims for which the whole organization
came into being.

Such, freely paraphrased, is Stalins ideal of an organiser.

With it inevitably goes, if a man is to succeed in practical
politics, a keen ruthlessness not too squeamish to
undermine an opponent who is troublesome, and brutally
efficient in the tactics of doing so. Yet there is a certain
cool appraisal of human values, and of the scarcity of good
men in Russia, which leads the secretariat of the Russian
Party never utterly to destroy men, but rather to place
them in other jobs, where they can be usefuland not
dangerous.

Stalins Way with Opponents.

Thus a prominent Communist whose flair for elegance

discredited him in ascetic Moscow, was given a high post
in an Eastern embassy, where that quality strengthened his
reputation. Thus, also, the members of the Opposition,
most of them marked by familiarity with Western
languages, are sent to be Ambassadors and heads of
trading organizations where they will be out of politics
but useful. It is the aim of the Russian Communist Party to
waste nobody, and to exalt nobody.

Trotskys Loyalty.

There is little doubt that in the last three years Trotsky

has been deliberately broken by Stalinbrutally, yet not
maliciously. It took a long time. Trotsky is no politician,
and Stalin is a very able one. Year after year Trotsky was
out-generaled into the position of the man starting
discussion. Of course no side ever entirely starts
discussion; it only answers an earlier statement of the
other side. But Stalin has been able to put Trotsky in the
place of the irreconcilable debater. It is this, and not the
right or wrong aspect of his views, that has broken Trotsky.
It has made him appear to threaten the unity of his party.
This is the one thing that will not be tolerated in Russia.
After every discussion Trotsky received a chance to submit.
And always he submitted in a way that the Western world
would call humiliatingoffering to take any work at any
post, or any work without a post, as the Central Committee
assigns; or, later, stating that inasmuch as his tactics had
seemed to the rank and file to threaten a real split in the
party, he considered that his tactics had been thoroughly
wrong, and he would not repeat them.

Trotskys Individuality.

But his submission has never been complete enough to

satisfy the standards of Russian Communism. He has
always maintained some corners of his soul that were
unsubmitting; he has criticised not only when criticism
was called for, but even in the hour of action. He has never
ceased to be Trotsky.

So he is considered always unsafe, irregular by the

central machine of the party. That is why they felt that he
must be broken.

The loss of Trotsky takes much thrill and colour out of

life in Moscow. When he ceased to receive the new recruits
in the Red Square and to administer the oath of devotion
he himself had written, the parades became commonplace.
All revolutionary festivals are duller for the loss of Trotsky;
all revolutionary life is less enthusiastic. For he was, and
might be again, the great inspirer of enthusiasm. It was his
unique gift to lift each mans task to the plane of an
important battle for Socialism.

There used to be tens of thousands of men who would

die with enthusiasm for Trotsky, or even for Trotskys
mistakes; there are many still to-day; though fewer. No
one would die for Stalin. But increasing hundreds of
thousands would wear out health and life; would die
without enthusiasm but as part of the days job for the
organization of which he is secretary and accepted voice.